


that’s why

by windwaves



Series: your song is the only thing i hear [2]
Category: IDOLiSH7 (Video Game)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:00:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25516915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windwaves/pseuds/windwaves
Summary: living is painful. it's a strange, inescapable truth that has haunted yuki since he was young.
Relationships: Oogami Banri/Yuki
Series: your song is the only thing i hear [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2050269
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	that’s why

だから僕は だから僕は音楽を辞めた  
that’s why i, that’s why i gave up on music  
— だから僕は音楽を辞めた, ヨルシカ // dakara boku wa ongaku wo yameta, yorushika

* * *

people leaving had never bothered yuki before. the parade of girlfriends, his parents, his schoolmates. he’s used to it, people's presence in his life more defined by their absence, passing ghosts that do not linger.

people leaving had never bothered yuki before.

at least, not until banri left.

he turns the pegs to retune the strings, except he turns too much and the string snaps, leaving a faint line across the back of his hand.

that's fine. he knows what to do. he knows how to deal with broken strings. there's spare strings in the gig bag, and there should be more in the box sitting in the cupboard. he just needs to get one and restring the guitar.

pliers and pulling out the bridge pin, then removing the old string. he's changed so many guitar strings before that it's almost automatic. thread it through the tuning peg and start turning, just a few turns. then trimming the string and tuning the guitar, turning the pegs until they were just right.

that's the easy part. a g chord. e minor. c major. d major. the easiest arrangement, practically a song in itself. the basic arrangement for so many songs; yuki's even used it himself before. and yet, it sounds flat and uninspired, almost broken. the guitar is in tune, his fingers are in the right place, pressing down on the frets. 

so _why_ does it sound so terrible?

yuki hates love songs.

it's one of the things that used to amuse banri to no end, his utter disdain for them. any time there was one on the radio or one of the other bands at the venue played love songs, yuki would make some noise of disgust or a face.

he'd never seen the point of them, seeing how so many of them were about pining and hoping and wishing for something. the songs about heartbreak were even worse, mourning a lost love or maybe only something you'd imagined.

the brief relationships he's had only made him even more certain he would never understand these things people considered so essential, so intrinsic to living. the girls never understood him, never tried to. and neither did he understand them.

after all, why would you sing love songs if you didn't understand love to begin with?

perhaps he relied on banri too much. yuki knows himself. he knows he is unreliable and unreasonable, that he can be incredibly selfish and difficult. he knows he doesn't care enough about the things other people care about, be it kindness or happiness or love. all that ever mattered had been the music.

banri had taken it all in stride somehow, laughing and smoothing things out, chiding and scolding him gently. he should have listened to banri, more often, he thinks. about manners, about respect, about doing better and giving more.

but banri's not here anymore to wake him up or chase him to bed. banri's not here to make sure he eats or gets to places on time, to remind him to mind his manners or just sit across him eating dinner. banri's not sitting across him, guitar in hand, pencil behind his ear and pages of their new song spread between them, arguing about the bridge changing keys.

banri's not here.

it's just yuki and his guitar, crumpled paper everywhere and something inside him that screams and keeps screaming.

he thinks he would rather not have music if he can have banri back. he would give it up, because banri had always been able to hear him even without the music.

what good was music if there was no one to listen?

when people talk about the future, they talk about family and careers, five year plans and ten year plans, retirement at forty, fifty. yuki remembers the form he had to fill out in high school, how his teacher had sighed at him when he'd turned in a blank form, then told him he had to think about it because being a musician wasn't a practical thing. that he should consider university, what did his parents think?

the thing was, yuki had never thought about not having music in his life. music had been the only way he could communicate, the only way to tell someone _please listen to me, please hear these things i have to say._ it was the one thing that had never changed even when everything else did. practicality didn't factor into it; simply put, there was no yuki without music.

so what was he now that the music was gone?

he leaves the guitar in the corner. he doesn't want to look at it or touch it. it's easier to forget about it. he doesn't bother with notepaper and composing new songs.

instead, he focuses on the few things he can still do. chop tomatoes and cook rice, make dinner from whatever little they have. pick up groceries, do occasional odd jobs, beg for people's kindnesses, try harder, make an effort in all the things he'd left to banri before.

yuki can get by; he's gotten by before. it's not so different from his childhood, especially in the years he'd been old enough to be left alone. it's just harder now, somehow. because he knows it could be different and better and not this hard, not so hard. because loss means that he had and now he doesn't and there is something of him gone with it.

the screaming doesn't stop.

c major. a minor. f major. g major. easy enough, the absolute basics. he starts plucking and the guitar sings under his hands, familiar and easy. strum, pluck, gather a melody of some kind between his hands. it doesn't matter if there are no lyrics or the lyrics are terrible if he can manage a melody of some kind, the supporting harmonics. just as long as it sounds like a song, or at least the beginning of one.

he cannot have lost this, he thinks. when everything else had failed, he'd always had music.

but maybe he has lost it, after all. if he has, perhaps he should give up on it after all. even though ban had once told him he was someone who couldn't live without music, perhaps he would have to learn how.

draw a line, divide it into two. call it before, call it after.

this is the start of after.

to yuki, this is all banri's fault.

for putting it in his hands, then taking it away.

he'd never tell anyone this, but the first song was the hardest. there were things that used to be his and banri's. but this one is just him now, raw on a page.

no banri to write with him, to tidy his notes and make sense of it, or to sit opposite him with a guitar and suggest chords, verses, bridges. it's him struggling to string together enough notes to fill a bar, to make a melody. enough words to become a verse, then lyrics for a song.

in between car washes and acting jobs, it takes shape. between trying to make enough money to pay rent for their apartment and cobbling simple dinners together, he finds a rhythm. it's the longest yuki ever spent on a song, and in the end he keeps it for himself.

verse. chorus. chorus.

it's short. it repeats itself. it's just his, this one.

but he has his music again, and that's enough.

“i wrote you a song, after,” he tells banri, years later. they're on the phone and it's late, he has his guitar in his lap and he's been toying with some new melodies the last few days. a new song for re:vale, perhaps. or maybe just a phrase to keep for another day.

banri makes a humming noise, yuki can hear the clack of the keyboard as banri types. he wonders if banri gave up music completely, if he's stopped playing any music at all. he wonders if banri still has his guitar, even.

“how did it go?” banri asks, pausing in his typing.

selfishly, yuki wants to keep it to himself. it was for banri, but banri hadn't been there to listen to it. it had been so difficult to write, that first song in the aftermath.

“painfully,” he says, because he doesn't know how not to be honest or blunt with banri. “i think it was the worst song i ever wrote.”

his fingers form a chord, thumb resting gently on the strings. if he strums, they would make noise, they would resonate. the air would vibrate with the sound, and maybe banri will hear what he's trying to say.

“that bad, huh?”

“absolutely terrible. it was about all the ways i was going to kill you if i ever saw you again.” it hadn't been. it was the closest yuki had ever gotten to writing a love song.

“how terrible. please tell me, how did i die?”

“attacked by a goose. tripped over the wire between your guitar and the amp. slipped on a banana peel and off a cliff. opened the door too hard and smacked yourself in the face. accidentally cut your finger making dinner and bled out.”

“sounds like your imagination was working overtime.”

“i had a lot of time.”

“oh my. how many times did i die then?”

“so many.”

“how terrible, yuki.”

“i thought i may as well be, since you told me that all the time.”

banri laughs at that, and yuki smiles. it still hurts to think about then, how he'd folded and broken in on himself. how difficult it had been to pull together, then the years of searching and grasping, hoping banri could hear all these things he wanted to say. but knowing banri is in reach again soothes the raw edges of it, that he can call and banri will pick up the phone.

when you turn pain into a song, it becomes a love song. suddenly all the other love songs make sense, because that was it had been, wasn’t it?

but banri doesn't need to know that. that's a secret for yuki to keep.

he'd been wrong about a lot of things. yuki knows this.

he'd thought that the fans never heard him or his songs or what he was trying to say. but he'd been wrong. momo had proven that to him.

he thought he couldn't live without banri, that he would never learn how to. but he did.

he'd thought all those things that people valued so much had no value to him, that they were not things he could understand. but he was wrong; he'd just never learned how to name them as such.

he thought if he didn't care, it wouldn't hurt. but not caring is difficult, and the thing is, well. yuki cares. he _cares_ , and sometimes he cares so much it hurts and he doesn't know how to make it stop.

living is painful. it's a strange, inescapable truth that has haunted yuki since he was young.

yuki’s standing here now because he survived it. somehow, he’d survived it.

he'd made it here, writing his music and singing his songs, somehow managing to keep hold of these things that mattered so much.

it had never been about the money or recognition. he'd only ever wanted someone to hear him properly, wholeheartedly.

banri had been the first person to, then believed enough to make yuki heard by everyone else.

perhaps in itself, that had been enough of a miracle.


End file.
